I know she watches.
The apartment across the courtyard has a perfect view into my bedroom. She probably didn't choose it for that reason—probably didn't know, when she signed the lease, that she'd end up with a front-row seat to my life.
But she knows now.
And she hasn't closed the blinds once.
Her name is Delia. Delia Okonkwo. Forty-eight years old, divorced two years ago, moved into the building six months back. I know because the super told me, when I asked who the new neighbor was. The one with the dark skin and the curves and the eyes that follow me every time I leave the building.
I also know because I watch her too.
It started by accident.
My apartment's layout is a mirror of hers—living room facing living room, bedroom facing bedroom, with the narrow courtyard between. The first night I noticed her looking, I was changing clothes after work. Stripped off my shirt, caught movement in my peripheral vision, looked up.
She was standing at her window.
Not hiding. Not pretending. Just standing there, a glass of wine in her hand, watching me with eyes that burned even from fifty feet away.
I should have closed the blinds. Should have turned away, pretended I hadn't seen her, gone about my evening like a normal person.
Instead, I kept undressing.
Belt. Pants. Underwear. Moving slowly, deliberately, hyperaware of her gaze on my body. When I was fully naked, I turned to face her window and let her look.
She didn't look away.
And something between us shifted.
It becomes a ritual.
Every night, around nine, I start undressing with my blinds open. Every night, she's at her window, watching. Sometimes with wine. Sometimes with something else—her hand moving in the shadows, a rhythm I can recognize even if I can't see clearly.
I put on a show for her.
I'm twenty-one, reasonably fit, with the kind of body that comes from a physical job and limited food budget. Nothing special by the standards of the enhanced and augmented corps up in the towers. But she doesn't seem to care about special. She seems to care about real.
And I am very, very real.
Some nights, I just undress and sleep. Some nights, I give her more. Touch myself while she watches. Let her see what thinking about her does to me.
She never comes over. Never knocks on my door. Never even says hello when we pass in the hallway.
But she watches. Every. Single. Night.
And I watch back.
I learn her body through stolen glimpses.
She's not careful the way I am. Doesn't put on shows. But she also doesn't hide—and in the scattered moments when I catch her changing, moving through her apartment, stepping out of the shower—
God.
She's thick in ways that make my mouth water. Heavy breasts that sway when she moves, dark nipples I've only glimpsed once through a wet tank top. Wide hips, soft belly, thighs that could crush something or cradle it. Her skin is dark brown, rich and warm even through the watery distance between our windows.
She's everything the world says I shouldn't want. Too old. Too big. Too much.
I want her so badly I can't think straight.
The knock comes on a Thursday.
I'm half-dressed, about to start my nightly ritual, when three soft raps sound against my door. I pull on pants and cross the apartment, not sure what to expect—neighbor complaint? Building issue? Some other mundane intrusion?
I open the door.
Delia.
She's wearing a silk robe—dark red, barely containing her—and nothing else. Her feet are bare. Her hair is loose, a crown of tight curls framing a face that's even more beautiful up close.
"I'm done watching," she says.
Her voice is deeper than I expected. Richer. Like her whole body condensed into sound.
"What?"
"Six months." She steps forward, and I step back automatically, letting her into my apartment. "Six months of watching you through that window. Six months of imagining what you taste like, what you feel like, what sounds you make when you come."
The door swings shut behind her.
"I'm forty-eight years old," she continues. "Divorced. Lonely. Too old and too fat for men my own age, and too realistic to pretend otherwise." She stops in front of me, close enough to touch. "But you—you look at me like I'm something worth looking at. Like you want what you see."
"I do."
"Then stop watching." She reaches for the sash of her robe. "And start touching."
The robe falls.
I've seen glimpses of her body through windows and shadows, but nothing prepared me for the reality. She's overwhelming—all of her, every inch. Her breasts are heavy, nipples dark and already hard. Her belly is soft, curved, beautiful. Her hips are wide, her thighs thick, and between them—
She catches me looking.
"See something you like, boy?"
The word boy should be insulting. From her lips, it's an invitation.
"Everything," I breathe. "I like everything."
"Then prove it."
She pushes me toward the bedroom.
I worship her like she's sacred.
Because she is. Because this body—this soft, thick, real body that she's spent forty-eight years wearing—is the most beautiful thing I've ever been allowed to touch.
I start at her throat. Trace my tongue down to her collarbone, across the swell of her breasts, around nipples that harden further under my mouth. She gasps when I suck, gasps again when I use teeth.
"Harder."
I give her harder.
I move lower. Kiss my way down her belly—the soft curve of it, the stretch marks that tell stories I want to hear. She tries to cover herself—instinct, maybe, or old shame—and I pull her hands away.
"Don't hide," I tell her. "I've been watching you for six months. I know what you look like. And I want all of it."
Her breath catches. Something vulnerable flickers in her eyes.
Then I bury my face between her thighs, and she stops thinking entirely.
She tastes like heat and want.
I take my time. Six months of waiting—I'm not going to rush this. I explore her with my tongue, learn what makes her gasp and what makes her moan and what makes her hands fist in my hair with a grip that borders on painful.
When she comes, she says my name like she's been waiting to say it for months.
Kai. Kai. Fuck, Kai—
I don't stop.
I keep going until she's shaking, until she's begging, until she's come twice more and her thick thighs are trembling around my head.
Then I climb up her body and kiss her, letting her taste herself on my lips.
"I've been thinking about that for six months," I tell her.
"Only six?" She laughs—breathless, raw. "I've been thinking about young men like you for twenty years. Never thought one would actually want me."
"Then they were idiots." I position myself between her thighs. "May I?"
"If you don't, I'll kill you."
Sliding inside her is like coming home.
She's hot and wet and tight, and she makes a sound when I bottom out—a low, guttural moan that vibrates through both of us. Her thick legs wrap around my waist, pulling me deeper.
"Move," she demands.
I move.
We find a rhythm quickly—urgent, desperate, making up for six months of wanting in a single feverish collision. She's not passive; she rolls her hips to meet my thrusts, rakes her nails down my back, bites my shoulder hard enough to leave marks.
"I watched you touch yourself," she gasps. "Every night. Imagined it was me you were thinking about."
"It was." I thrust harder. "Always. Only you."
"Liar."
"Try me." I grip her hips, pull her onto me, make her take every inch. "From the first night you watched. From the moment I saw you in that window. I imagined this—exactly this—every single night."
She clenches around me, and I know she believes me.
We fuck until neither of us can move.
In my bed. Against the wall. On the floor, her on top, riding me with those thick thighs while her breasts bounce and sway above me.
When we finally collapse, sweaty and satisfied, the first light of dawn is touching the courtyard outside.
"I should go," she murmurs.
"Why?"
"Because this was—" She hesitates. "I don't know what this was. I'm forty-eight. You're twenty-one. This isn't supposed to happen."
"Since when does supposed to matter?" I pull her closer, feel her soft body mold against mine. "I've been watching you for six months, Delia. Wanting you. Imagining this. Are you going to tell me it meant nothing?"
She's quiet for a long moment.
"No," she finally admits. "I can't tell you that."
"Then stay." I kiss her forehead. "Stay, and we'll figure out what this is together."
"People will talk."
"Let them." I grin against her hair. "I've got nothing to hide. I'm sleeping with my gorgeous older neighbor who has the most incredible body I've ever seen. If anything, I want people to know."
She laughs—startled, disbelieving.
"You're insane."
"Maybe." I tilt her face up, kiss her properly. "But you watched me for six months. You came to my door in nothing but a robe. I don't think sanity is really our thing."
She's quiet. Then she snuggles closer, her head on my chest, her thick body warm and present and real.
"I'll stay," she says. "But we're keeping the blinds open."
"Why?"
Her smile is wicked.
"Because now I want to watch us."
The neighbors eventually figure it out.
Hard not to, when we stop closing the blinds entirely. When anyone who cares to look can see the twenty-one-year-old and the forty-eight-year-old tangled together, night after night, in ways that leave nothing to imagination.
Some of them judge. Some of them stare. One guy in 4B starts watching every night like we're his personal entertainment.
We don't care.
"I spent twenty years being invisible," Delia tells me one night. "Too fat for attention. Too old for desire. Just background noise in other people's stories."
"And now?"
"Now I'm the main character." She straddles me, all two hundred and fifty pounds of her pinning me to the mattress. "And you're my co-star."
I pull her down into a kiss.
Through the window, the lights of Neo-Detroit flicker and pulse.
And in a bedroom that's no longer empty, two people who found each other through glass and distance learn what it means to stop watching and start living.